"Central bankers and
policy makers have failed to fully recognize the suffocating
impact of $100-a-barrel oil. Running huge budget deficits and keeping borrowing costs at
record lows are only compounding current problems. These
policies cannot be long-term substitutes for cheap oil because
an economy can’t grow if it can no longer afford to burn the
fuel on which it runs ... The more oil we burn, the faster the global
economy grows. On average over the last four decades, a 1
percent bump in world oil consumption has led to a 2 percent
increase in global GDP ... At $20 a barrel, increasing annual oil consumption by 2
percent seems reasonable enough. At $100 a barrel, it becomes
easier to see how a 2 percent increase in fuel consumption is
enough to make an economy collapse ... That’s why the best cure for high oil prices is high oil prices. When prices rise to a level that causes an economic crash, lower prices inevitably follow. Over the last four decades, each time oil prices have spiked, the global economy has entered a recession ... The energy industry’s task is not simply to find oil, but also to find stuff we can afford to burn. And that’s where the industry is failing. Each new barrel we pull out of the ground is costing us more than the last. The resources may be there for the taking, but our economies are already telling us we can’t afford the cost."
Ein Artikel von Jeff Rubin über den Zusammenhang von hohem Ölpreis, das Ende des Wachstums und wirtschaftlicher Rezession. Erschienen auf Bloomberg (24. September 2012).
